Captivity
by uva7
Summary: Bella and Edward are strangers who have been kidnapped by a sadist and forced to play out his fantasies.
1. Chapter 1

The rain pours thick over the city like slow molasses, drizzling deep down into its underbelly and soaking it to the core. Wet penetrates each and every thing with a malevolent creep that slip slither slides into the sewers.

But mostly, the rain just soaks my nest.

I shiver, knowing that I won't be dry tonight. All the shelters are surely full, though I cannot risk trying to stay in one. He might find me. And what then? Would he make me go back to that house? Would he beat me senseless, or within just an inch of it so I could lay and be miserable in the knowledge that I failed him? And that's the problem, the problem with me lying here when my work was left undone at the house. The problem was that I was being useless. I shook not so much from the cold, wet, or hunger, but more from the deep-down sort of knowledge that I was being a very, very bad girl.

My bones grate on the thinner edges of my space. My skin feels thin enough to betray my very bones to the outside world.

"Hey there, angel."

Jacob's voice rises like a sweet sunshine into my ears and warms my skin. I smile, despite the tensing of my muscles and quickening of my rabbit-fast heart. This is just Jacob, silly. He's never hurt you, no, not once. Not wanting to brave the rain, I turn my head just so I can peer out from under the top of the bin. What a sight I must be! He would be furious.

"Hi." My voice comes out too soft. I hope he's heard so I don't have to repeat myself. No need to draw attention.

"Wish I could squeeze in there with ya. It's fucking-" Flinch. I can't help it. "-awful out here."

"I'm sorry. Maybe-"

He's down on my level fast, too fast. Searching brown eyes pour into mine and the invasion hurts- even though it's just Jake. "Don't apologize, sweet girl." He reaches out to touch my chin, and I can nearly feel the disappointment weighing heavily off of him when I tuck my face back in. He knows I don't like to be touched.

"Listen. I'm going down under the bridge tonight. Hear me out! I know it's scary for you, but I'll be there with ya the whole time. No one will bother us. The weather's too bad for you right now and your shelter is on its last legs."

I consider the cracked plastic above me. He's right, but if we're down there, there's so much that can go wrong, and I-

"C'mon now."

I extract myself slowly from the shelter to avoid his outstretched hand. The rain preys upon every dry bit of me, and like the slow winter chill draws life from fall, it begins to draw mine. Tremors make my bones feel brittle. Jacob lets his soaking plastic poncho fall over my head to shield off the majority of the wet. I don't protest. This is something I wish was different- that I could be like normal girls, and actually stand up for myself. Say I wanted things to be a certain way. But ever since she left, he had beaten that right into my very core. I am in charge. Not you. Never you.

We make our way through the alleyways of the city, Jacob trading silent nods with allies and edging carefully past the territory of those less friendly. This is partially why he heaps old trench coats and sweatshirts and the like over me. The more covered I am, the less noticeable and hopefully the less appealing. The drug addicts, gangbangers, and others were always hunting. For a hit, for some cash, but mostly for anyone defenseless. I tried not to stray from my hiding places unless in Jacob's wake. With a dark complexion and stone-y features, he cuts an imposing figure that is a challenge in its own right. He's also built himself a fair reputation for fighting, which doesn't help my anxiety around him. But I need him. For safety, and to keep me somewhat sane out here.

The bridge is a nasty part of our makeshift community. Jake says that wherever large groups of people gather, there's bound to be trouble. Just as this is true of higher crime rates in cities, this is also true of the bridge.

A sad little river was cause for its construction, but it's a sickly little thing that is more sludge than anything else. Shopping carts, car tires, used needles- you name it. Under the bridge was best for storms like this, because the river hardly swelled at all and it was the most sheltered from the elements. Especially back where the bridge was low to the sloping upwards ground, by where it met the road- if you could wedge yourself under there, you could stay dry. Or dry off, in our case.

The problem was that I couldn't stay here by myself. I hardly allowed Jake to convince me to come, normally. But I had lost so much weight since coming out here that cold ate right through me. I couldn't land in a hospital. He might find me. So Jake got his way tonight.

Foreign hands wisped along my shoes, the bottom of my pants, the sides of my coats. Jacob wolfishly bared his teeth, standing up taller despite the lower and lower the ceiling got. I knew he was trying to protect me, but it still gave me bright flashes of hot panic. I doused them as soon as they came.

"Right under here. C'mon angel." He threw a warning glare at two skinny kids not much younger than us. They scurried farther back into the darkness and away from a dry corner. We crept into it, nestling down and knotting together for the body heat. I made sure to keep our layers in between us. I needed this for survival, but my heart still nearly beat out of my chest.

"Sleep, Bella." Ah, another solid instruction. Sometimes, though I was thankful each day for escaping him, I missed the security of Charlie's dominance.

I slept.

The crack of thunder didn't wake me so much as the incessant plea of my bladder did. The storm had continued, but the rain appeared to have let off for a bit. I crept away from Jake, which woke him immediately from the aware-and-asleep state he had settled in to.

"I will be right back. I just have to pee." His eyes shimmied closed again, into little slits.

"Not too far."

Resisting the urge to apologize or thank him, I wormed my way out from our corner. Once the ceiling was high enough to stand bent, I dodged out from under the bridge into a little group of bushes. I could at least have some privacy- a luxury not to be underestimated out here.

I peeled away the hanging ends of my upper layers to get at my pants, and had just put my fingers on the button and zipper when I felt ice against my skin.

Metal. On my hip. A neck, at my mouth. I could smell fresh soap, tinged of man.

Fear, like a wild beast, reared its head and swallowed me whole.

"Hello, Isabella."

Darkness.


	2. Chapter 2

BPOV

And at once, I am aware.

I know how to wake up in a dangerous situation. Carefully, and never all at once. I send my mind down to the tips of my toes, shifting my bones and making sure everything below the waist can be accounted for without injury. My knees feel bruised, and my feet have likely bled through my socks again, but nothing feels new. Okay, up. My consciousness moves along my hips (very sore- new) up through my gut. I feel incredibly nauseous. My chest feels fine. Carefully, and still blind, I feel along my neck. There is a pinprick of soreness, and as I remember my last moments, I know he must have given me something.

My eyes are opened by a sense of being watched.

Abuse makes you an animal of prey. It causes a certain sort of behavior, a wariness, a constant not-quite-at-ease sense of threat. I know when I am being watched.

I take in my surroundings quickly to find a hiding place. My heart has taken up a pounding sprint by now. I am not safe. Not at all.

The room I am in is like nothing I've ever seen before. A four walled square, with three mirrored glass walls and one transparent. I am in a cage.

I am curled in a fetal position, with the bars biting into my back and hips. It seems to be… a dog cage? I shift myself upwards into a sitting position, though it's very uncomfortable. I push against the sides, but there is no door that I can see. My cage sits at the base of a greying mattress atop a box spring, with no sheets to speak of or pillow.

The new position of my head crammed under the top of the cage makes my collar bite into my skin.

Wait.

I trace it with my fingers. It's smooth and cold, and made of something chillingly hard. At five or six places there is an uncomfortable sort of spike. Not so much a spike, but rather a rounded protruding piece that digs and hurts me.

Fear. Overwhelming. I must close my eyes, for I can feel the panic carrying me away.

"Welcome, Isabella."

I would have jumped about four feet in the air if I were able. Instead, my skin pressed impossibly harder against the walls of the cage and my trembling increased ten fold.

"I think it's time we explain our first rule."

The voice comes from a small speaker that shines in the upper corner of the room, adjacent to a security camera. They both look the way stainless steel appliances do, and are that much more terrifying because of it.

FIRE.

Electricity jumps through my body, ripping and burning and OH PLEASE GOD MAKE IT-

It stops. I sag deep into the cage, shivering and crying. My cries are involuntary, so great the pain. The collar was the origin of the shock. But it didn't feel small, like I assume electric dog collars feel. This was true pain. Worse than when Charlie-

"Isabella, this is what will happen when you do not do what is asked of you. Do you understand?"

I nod through my tears. This is something I can understand. Pain, because I did a bad thing. I burrow my nails deep into my thighs, something I did when I lived with Charlie to help ground me in the moment. Fear could carry me away, and when it swept me along it caused me to do other bad things.

Bad, bad girl. I brought this upon myself.

The pokey things in the collar were warm on my neck. I feel it humming along my throat like a living thing.

"Isabella, look and see why you've been brought here."

I fight through tears to lift my head. On the other side of the transparent wall is a nearly identical room. Three mirrored walls. One common wall with me. But no cage, and the bed has sheets. There is a knife lying on the ground next to the man's feet.

My eyes find him and I cry out in terror.

He looks demonic, wild as sin and frighteningly handsome.

He stands at the ready, close to the wall we share. But it's not his proximity that terrifies me, it's his eyes. They are the most startling shade of green and they burn right through me and I feel as though I shall be ash. I can physically feel the anger boiling off of him, and I shrink back as much as I can. This man could kill me. This man will kill me. Does he know how bad I have been?

He's much taller than Charlie. Probably six and a half feet, he makes me quake just with the sheer size of him. And oh.

He's naked.

So am I!

It escapes me how I could have not noticed until this moment. I blush deeply and try to shift to cover the important bits, but there's really not much room and I bend my wrist the wrong way trying. I bite my lip and cry out, and the strength my tears have me quivering more than my fear does.

He suddenly slams his open hand to the glass wall, searching my eyes with his. He says something, but it's soundless.

"Edward wants to say hi."

The glass wall, incredibly, begins to rise. It slips away into the ceiling with a sickening slowness, and I know this is it. I have been so bad, and the voice is punishing me, and this man must be here to do the same. He is so muscular. His body has been chiseled, absolutely horrifying in its size. He moves quickly under the wall, and with a liquid grace even in his anger. He stoops down to my cage and grasps the bars at the top.

Gritting his teeth- oh! He is like an animal, and tears the top bars of the cage apart. His shoulders fan out into the wingspan of his arms, muscles churning and veins popping.

I have never been so frightened.

Snatching me roughly by the shoulders and pinning my arms to my sides, he pulls me from the ruined cage. Once he sets me on the bed, I scoot away from him, pulling up my knees and crying harder.

In a situation like this, so confusing, so unknown, I must hide. Yet the room offers no sanctuary. Edward reaches his hand towards me, and I flinch and half raise mine in defense. It is of no use of course. He can do anything he wants to me.

EPOV

When I first noticed my new neighbor, I was filled with a profound sadness. After what happened to the last girl (the pain of which is still so fresh for me) I knew that I would be unable to bear the same.

I would make sure this one got to live.

Although it's not much of a life, it is a life. I hold hope still that someone, anyone is searching…

The cages piss me off. What a way for her to become accustomed to this life. He knows that it sets the tone, and helps them understand how things will be. Hence the collar. And the water dish on the floor. And the lack of sheets on the bed. All to degrade, and make them more compliant…

But this one was already destroyed.

I could tell even while she slept. I saw the scars and knew. Cigarette burns. Small crescent moons that I now know are self-inflicted on her thighs. Other irregular scars, all over her, that spoke to years of abuse. But when she woke, oh, when she woke.

It was the shaking and the little cries that gave it away. And those big old brown eyes that melt like a victim's. That's what she is. A victim. I don't know how he found her, but he found a girl who has already been conditioned for him to be perfectly obedient. I bet she would follow orders even without the collar. Well, some. But we'll see.

Her size concerns me also. Not only is she too short, but she also weighed probably one hundred pounds soaking wet. He loves to starve them here. He whispers to me sometimes, over the speaker, that I should be grateful to have such pretty little things to play with. He whispers that he hopes I enjoy the feel of their bones as much as he will when they're dead.

Not this one, though. I will make sure.

I know she's afraid of me, but I can't hold myself back when the wall goes up. I can't stand to see them in the cages. I have to be a brute with it too, because I've learned that he won't let them out.

I know I have to be careful. But the anger, for me, is a living thing. A dragon that sleeps very lightly in my belly, and is woken by the slightest thing. That fire in me is what landed me in prison to begin with.

I can't think of the past here. All focus needs to be away from the outside world, unless concerned with how to return to it.

She shies away from me after I've lifted her (and I can feel when I do that my weight estimate was too generous). I can tell by the heat of her blush that she feels uncomfortable with the exposure in our situation. Modesty will do her no good here (it did none of them any good).

I can tell that I've scared her. "Fuck." I pull my hand roughly through my hair to ground myself. The murmur in my body begins to quiet. I can relax my muscles, just so, and then a bit more. Breathe, Edward.

When I reach out to her, I intend to comfort. Take her hand and explain our situation, and the role that she must (must!) play if she wants to remain alive. But when she flinches and raises her hand to shield the blow she's expecting, I nearly lose it.

Someone hurt this little girl.

She is a girl. We're naked and her body begs to differ, but I can see in her pleading eyes that there is no maturity, no independence, no strength.

Only fear.

I drop to my knees. I want to seem the least threatening I possibly can. I need to make her understand that I mean her no harm (he does) and that I am in the same situation as she (not quite).

"Look," I begin, trying to make my voice as soft as I can. She still winces and the tears continue. I touch the collar at my own neck. "We're in this together."

She quickly wipes at her eyes, looking for all the world a child.

"Where are we?" her voice falls softly on my ears. She is so weak.

"I don't know. But you're safe, for now. He hasn't told me to do anything yet. I won't touch you."

Her visible relief at this is momentary. She startles when a laugh comes over the speaker. Fuck. He's not done for today just yet.

"Edward, you're being too kind to her. She's been a very, very bad girl, and I think you need to teach her a lesson."

"Please, you twisted fuck, don't make me fucking do this yet. She just got here!" I put my head between my hands. As if any amount of pleading will change what he wants. None of it ever has. This detached voice, this sick son of a bitch, has been the bane of my existence for God knows how long. The shock comes, but it's expected and subtle, just a tap to remind me what is at stake. I'm not in too much trouble just yet.

"Punish her."

Defeat slumps my shoulders. I stand heavily, and stride over to my bed to retrieve the knife.


	3. Chapter 3

BPOV

When he picks up the knife, I panic.

Not a wild sort of panic, but rather a paralysis that seeps from my mind down through my body. I stop crying, and watch him with wary eyes. I know that the voice seems to be commanding the situation, but he has gone and gotten this knife on his own. Maybe he has been here longer than I have?

Was there someone here before me?

I feel a strange sense of hysteria. I feel detached from my body- like when Charlie would do the truly awful things to me. When he broke my wrist. Or when he would sit on my chest so I couldn't breathe…

He sits too close to me on the bed, but has lifted me before I can shift away. He pulls me into his lap, knife in hand. What a strange thing, to be touching another person so completely. We are entirely exposed, bare skin on bare skin. All of my conditioned fears climax at a painful point behind my eyes, and the floodgates open once more. No longer detached, I am quaking and sobbing. The knife glints impossibly sharp before me, with an edge that doesn't stop but rather tapers out of being.

He puts his arm around my neck, cupping his hand closed over my mouth. This quiets my sobs to some degree, and I know I am being a bad girl by not stopping, but I can't, it's just too much and I-

"How fucking much?"

I hate curse words. I hate hate hate them. "You fucking bitch! You fucking piece of worthless shit!" CRACK

I can't I

He's just so close and I

i don't like to be touched i can't i can't

I am slipping into a sea. A black and cold sea that languidly licks over my feet, and then my knees, and then my waist, and oh, how soothing to drown…

The cool blade makes itself a foreign part of me as it nestles into the top of my arm. His firm grip on me isn't firm enough, and my small struggle makes the blade slip deeper than he intended.

"FUCK. HOW FUCKING MUCH?"

His grip on me tightens until I feel he shall break my bones. The knife slithers out, and crimson gathers in the relatively shallow wound.

It feels as though my arm is on fire.

I look up into his eyes, and plead for forgiveness. "I'm so sorry. I'll be better. I'll be a good girl!" Within their emerald depths I can read sorrow, sorrow so profound it seems to encompass all that there is in his soul. He bites his lip, as though biting back the tears I can see gathering in the corners of his eyes. He cradles me still, tightly, but I feel almost swaddled in his lap like a baby, despite our exposure. I thought he was punishing me, but, dare I say it… he seems to also be receiving punishment of his own.

"What do you think, Edward? Have you taught her thoroughly how things will go?" The voice is a cascade of scarcely-masked glee.

"Yes." He grinds this response out, and I can feel (because I'm touching his skin!) his body sag in exhaustion. This man is weary. His body is hard and coiled to strike, but his mind is leaving him.

I am exhausted too, aren't I? The pain is slipping away from me. The whole world seems to be deserting me, in fact. Just

slipping away from where I can

feel it and I just

Darkness.

When I wake, the wall is up.

I take slow stock of myself, and open my eyes. The top of my arm bears a snowy bandage, a pad of gauze carefully taped down. I sit up, and my head swims. I wonder who has taken care of me?

It must have been him. I cannot discern any doors to leave the room we're in, though one could be flush with the glass and undiscoverable. Operated remotely, like the transparent wall. I look to see him.

He sits on the edge of the bed, with his hands in his hair and head bowed deeply towards the floor. The breadth of his shoulders still takes my breath away (this is a dangerous man) but my fear for him is lessened each passing moment in this hellish nightmare.

A teardrop falls from his downward turned face, and another. He is crying.

I have never seen a man cry.

I stand, on wobbly newborn calf legs that threaten to abandon this pursuit. I feel brittle, but I walk towards the wall that we share. In all of my time of pain, of suffering, of despair, I hoped for someone to share the burden of horror with. I sink down to my knees, and sit cross-legged, my knees pressed up to the wall.

He observes this with a slightly lifted head, and when I have settled, he sinks to his hands and knees and moves the short distance to the wall. He joins me, and places his forehead against the glass (when his head is bowed this way, it looks as though it is done almost in prayer).

I place my forehead against his, with about a half inch of glass separating us. Strangely, I feel no anxiety with this action.

He has been one of my torturers here. He probably will continue to be. But I knew when he showed me our common collar that he was a prisoner as I was, and a slave to the disembodied voice.

The wall begins to rise, which startles me. My gasp is quick, but I scoot under the rising wall and into his lap.

How strange to feel this touch and feel comforted.

His massive arms encircle me completely and cradle me to his chest. I don't cry, or even tremble- I am fearless in this moment. His sorrow dampens the top of my head.

I can trust this man.

EPOV

I can trust this girl.

She will survive this, I know for a fact. Her strength in initiating contact is evident. Even as a clear abuse victim, she has some sort of fire in her that will allow her to keep going.

Tanya nearly made it. In the end, she just had too much fire. She challenged the voice a lot in the beginning, and the multitude of shocks gave her some tremors and twitches that were heavily unsettling. But she seemed to learn after awhile… until the voice made the demand that they all refuse. Bile rises in my throat imagining another day, with this girl, that the demand will be made.

This voice belongs to a man who is seriously fucked up. A sexual sadist, he gets off on making me do these things to these girls. But it's all part of his delusion. In his mind, I know, he imagines that he is making my life perfect. Treating me to a wonderful kingdom with all that I desire. There is a disconnect in his brain that creates this fantasy.

But when the girls shatter the fantasy to refuse the demand…

I cannot warn them. He's always listening. I need to stay alive, because he could bring someone else in here who doesn't know how to make this the least horrible for them. He could bring someone in who might actually… enjoy this.

I never let the anger get the best of me purposely. But sometimes, I have hurt the girls. I look down and see this sweet bird's delicacy. Her weakness. I need to preserve her- it's an all-consuming sort of need that I hope will help me contain the anger if the time should ever come.

My thoughts are so scattered as I hold this girl. She feels sharp in my arms, something that terrifies me. There is no room for error in her body weight, and I worry in the time to come that he will play his eating games with her.

I know that there will be points of light with her.

We will laugh. I will learn about her past life. We will bond and become friends. I did these things with all of the other girls- I need to make their time here mean something.

I need to make sure they have someone to remember them.

But with this one, I need to understand her. I am compelled by her presence, feeling things I have not felt with the others. I need to shield this from him until I can understand the implications.

Perhaps, if he believes me to be in love with her, he will see his job as done.

I have been so lost in the wanderings of my musings that I have not noticed she has fallen deeply asleep. Her breathing is coming from an at-ease part of her, and it soothes me with a fresh and cool whisper.

I stand, lifting her with ease (she is such nothingness it pains me). She does not stir. I make my way over to my bed, since he has always graced me with soft white sheets and blankets. The girls tend to shiver the nights away when he keeps us separate. What a kindness he has done her tonight…

When I try to lay her down, she whimpers in her sleep and clutches tighter at my neck. It breaks my heart, her desperate need to trust me. She should be much more cautious, choosing me for security so early on. Of course, I will be here for her.

Once lying in the bed, she winds herself so close to me it feels like she's trying to leap inside of my skin. She shivers with delicacy (it's always so chilly in here) and I manage to maintain my composure when her erect nipples brush against me.

He will make me do those things later on, and I mustn't look forward to them at all.

I hum her a sweet lullaby to swing us both softly into sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

Author's Note: Hey all! I'm sorry for the long wait, but I am unfortunately (well, very fortunately) in college and my schedule is as varied as my level of inspiration for writing. But this story has been sitting so heavy on my mind for so long that I'm sure I'll be updating with more regularity this spring. Expect one week between each update (and try to hold me to it ). And I noticed there was some request for me providing more backstory, etc. And the answer is no… I prefer to let the writing speak for itself, yeah? Thanks so much for your time&amp;attention.

BPOV

Breathe.

Perhaps the easiest thing, in the lovely shallow place between oblivion and wakefulness. I imagine that it is as a lovely pond, in the late springtime. Quiet whisper-water flowing with gentle tread over sun-faded stone smooth to the touch. I imagine lying in this serene cradle, as I lie tender before waking. But breathing here comes easy and soft, for I have not yet come home to my body. Breathing is as much a thought as an action. Come into myself, go out. In, and out.

The water seems to breathe, and warms my bones along with the sunshine. This peace has a special aura to it, and I stretch beneath the lovely springtime sun in a languid motion that hints at rest ahead. My bones seem to elongate under the nurturing quiet, and drifting away from this place brings tears to my eyes.

I have come back into my body, or rather, back into my nightmare.

This waking is so different, however. Because it feels warmer the closer and closer my face drifts to the surface, and the water breathes in and out around me. In, and out.

And at once!

My face above the water, my face in reality. My face attached to my body and skin currently in the posession of another! He surrounds me, flush against me, naked as the day he was born and oh!

He is so upsettingly, disturbingly, nightmarishly big all around. Every part. And I do mean every part, which beckons my tears to be born quickly from my eyes as my body contracts in a sob.

I burst from his arms as a bird flushed from a thicket, crying hard and loud now, and tumbling back to the hard cement floor. My bones creak with the impact and I feel pain blossom under my taunt skin. He lifts his great head with its shock of hair, and his shock of expression, and he is absolutely

absolutely

stunning and I hate him for it. It stills my tears and my breath and I sit, nakedness forgotten, mouth open and openly staring at this man.

EPOV

She woke me with a violent motion that quite disturbed me. The other girls always took immediate solace in my company, and beyond my actions dictated by the voice, were never afraid. I suppose her action only lends more truth to my theory that this is not her first nightmare.

I move forward towards her, down off the bed. I choose to remain on my hands and knees, since it seems this is the level that she honestly seems most comfortable with. I say honestly because this girl is a true open book. Her wide, decadent eyes show every moment how she feels, and right now I am absolutely struck by the urge to remove the terror from them.

I speak softly, and let the words land gently on delicate ears.

"Isabella, my name is Edward."

She startles at the sound still, still quaking like a leaf in an October wind.

"Bella."

"Beautiful." I smile at her voice, which is a whisper that enters the world as if it has absolutely no right to be there at all. But at this compliment, she whimpers and bites her lip. I can read it on her face, how uncomfortable she is with this attention, and I make note. Unfortunately, what will happen in the nearer-than-acceptable future will be much worse than an innocent compliment.

"Bella. I don't know where you came from before, but what matters most is surviving where you- we, are now. It won't be easy, but I'm here and we can do it together. I will always do my best to protect you, but sometimes that means hurting you."

She nearly imperceptably nods her head, and I can see acceptance in her eyes. Good, she trusts me. But shit, because I need her to retain the will to live. Once the other girls accepted our condition completely, their fate was completely sealed. Well. That's what I tell myself to be able to sleep at night.

I reach forward brazenly, because I suspect it will work. And it does, for when my hands enclose her on either side, she scampers right into my lap like the starved-for-contact little bunny she is.

I rub her arms in a hopefully soothing way, wincing at the way her spine seems to push strong against the skin of her back. Her shoulders protrude like wings, and huddled in my lap the way she is, she is truly fragile.

Her nakedness is so strange to me. With all the others, it ceased to shock me- the unapologetically feminine nature of bare woman. But with this small creature, I cannot stop looking. My heart simply aches to care for her, to nurture her into the ravishing beauty she ought to be. Evidence of her womanhood is there, in the curve of her hip and the perfection of the form of her breast. But she is like a bird, with hollow- and sharp-looking bones that betray her ill health.

I honestly hope that I can at least maintain her current state. I must protect her, I must. It won't matter how sane I keep her if her body is starved out of existence.

"Good morning, Edward."

I don't even startle at the voice. How can I? It has been my one constant throughout this mess. The girls have come and gone (but this one will not!).

"Please take Isabella to the other room." It is in little statements like this that his true depravity shines through. He would never say her room. I know that he can never imagine anything as hers. None of the girls ever achieved any level of humanity for him. None.

I pick her up as I stand, which quickens the quaking, before I have the good sense to hold her tightly enough to give her some semblance of stability. Once standing, I carry her slowly across to her space. I stop about a foot from the bed and wait for further-

"FUCK!" The word is out of my mouth before I can stop it, and a scream as well, an absolute nightmare of a beast of a noise that flies quickly from deep within me. I drop the girl, falling to my knees as she clatters to the floor like broken china. The shock from the collar is gone as quickly as he gave it to me, and I shudder for a few moments with my eyes closed before opening them.

"Pick. Her. Up. Edward."

My body protests as I stand again, gathering my crying little bundle back into the not-safety-at-all of my arms (I know he is playing one of his games now).

Whispering down into her ear, I say: "Alright bunny, just keep still and trust me. It will be over soo-"

Again, and again.

He shocks me until there are stars in my eyes that last long until the next shock.

He shocks me until the bruising on her body becomes terribly, terribly clear.

He shocks me until I finally toss her onto her bed, sink to my knees, and cry.

I don't pick her up again.

He doesn't ask me to.

BPOV

Pain.


	5. Chapter 5

JBPOV

I don't have many of the facts, but I know that I failed.

I failed my beautiful girl, failed to protect her, failed to keep her safe.

When she initially hadn't returned, that night under the bridge, my first reaction was anger.

"Where the fuck is she?" bellowing, I tossed the slimy drug rat down, shoving his face in the growing puddle on the riverbank. Blind in panic, I pull my fist back and slam it, again and again, into the coward. When I shouted after Bella, the piece of shit caught my eye in the shadows, slinking out from under the bridge. He definitely knew something.

"I'll fucking kill you, I swear to god." I snarl in his filthy face, feeling for all the world like a wild animal, predatory and ready to tear the world apart for her.

Sobbing, hands up, the guy chokes out, "He took her man! She's gone!"

"Who?"

"I don't know him." Pleading, red-rimmed and strung out eyes. "He watches the girls sometimes. He's blonde, long hair. Ok man? Let me go, ok? She's gone!"

Tossing the snivelling boy down, I straighten to my full height. The storm continues, but getting a little wet is less and less concerning the longer Bella was missing. I feel a moment of clarity, which strikes though my anger painfully. How will I find her with only this to go on? Is Bella even still alive to be found? Gritting my teeth, I closed my eyes. No, I will find my girl regardless. I will find her, and find a way to hold down a real job. I will save her from her abuductor, whoever he is, and then maybe she will finally take my touch without flinching. And maybe, finally, I can be happy.

I remember when I first came across the girl. She was fresh on the streets, holding a piece of glass, pathetically trying to protect a shitty shelter from another anonymous homeless man. I was struck by her, a teensy girl holding her own- well, trying to- against a seasoned street rat. Before he could laugh, she struck out with the ferocity of a tiger coming from her little kitten body. She stabbed the guy! Well, really just cutting his hand, but still.

The man shrank back, thinking twice about prey that might fight back. Upon doing so, he caught a glimpse of me, as hulking and imposing as I could be. Needless to say, he made himself scarce.

Bella looked up at me with terror and fire behind her eyes, raising again her little scrap of a weapon and furrowing her brow in an adorable look of intensity.

I crossed my arms and smiled, saying "Hi. I'm Jake".

From that moment on, we had an uneasy relationship. I cared for Bella, but her unspoken past was like an emotional ball and chain. She could never completely give me her trust, no matter how often I earned it. But it was nice to have a companion to spend the long, cold nights with. To speak to, to enjoy, and know that she would never screw me over.

And now she was gone, taken into the night, by some servant of it.

I considered her my family out here- even my band of merry misfit street guys hadn't provided what she had. Despite her obviously horrific past, despite her obvious mental instability, she still represented a normal life for me.

Raised far from here, among dewy evergreens and under an overcast sky, I had known always that I wasn't where I should be. That being said, I had never known exactly where I ought to go. I knew that the reservation was wrong for me, that the strong culture of my people felt so foreign to me even after being raised completely under its influence. I had never been at home there, and this led to my inevitable disenchantment. When I struck out on my own, I claimed I was looking for work, or a change of scenery. In reality, I was only looking for home.

And I thought I found it in those brown doe-eyes.

I shove my hands in my pockets, striding with purpose under the Seattle storm. Through the city streets, I see the world in black and white. I have a rough description to go on, and plenty of influence among the true eyes and ears of the city. I slip around the corner into an alley, with a task at hand and a mission under foot.

BPOV

One of the worst parts of this imprisonment is the not knowing. The not knowing night from day, and the not knowing what will happen to me from one moment to the next. There is no discernable way to keep track of time, other than counting off the seconds in my own head. But through the haze of my exhaustion, hunger, and pain, this is near impossible. I drift off into the dark sea within my own mind, fingers faintly reaching to grasp reality and never quite achieving it. I am dimly aware that I am alone, which gave me much more anxiety than it ought.

Where is he?

The mattress is awfully uncomfortable on my sore body, and it has a not-so-faint smell of fear, sweat, and girl. And lightly, lightly underneath all that: the smell of blood. A coppery and sharp-edged smell that bites into my senses and steals me from unconsciousness.

I need to be more aware. To cease this waking unawares. When I was in the outside world, I always kept one eye open and was hardly ever caught off guard… well, thanks to Jake, mostly.

Jake!

If anyone will be my salvation, it will be him. Even if Charlie was to find me, he would only drag me back to my hellish childhood home. One nightmare to another. But if Jake was to find me… He is so terribly, terribly devoted. I know that I am not capable of what he wanted for me. I will never be normal- because I am at heart a truly bad girl. Why else would so many of these horrible things happen tome? I must walk through the world doing the wrong things, being the wrong thing… this at least gives me some comfort.

I know that good things happen to good people, and bad things to bad people. The worst thing to think is that I simply have the worst luck- but my mind, deep down, knows that since these things kept happening, I deserve them. Now, I feel that I can take it as a punishment. I can bear it, and be strong.

But Edward… he seems so nice. Like such a good man. I forgive him for the earlier abuse, knowing that he has no choice in the matter at all. We are in this together. Both collared. Both shut in these horrible rooms. Both at the mercy of the disembodied voice.

This also makes him easier to trust. Jake was homeless with me, but I still could never be sure that he wasn't after me, or trying to hurt me for his gain. His strength and charisma, albeit not his temper, would take him far in life. I had no choice, but it surely seemed that he had. This fact nags at the back of my mind, and it permanately poisoned my relationship with him and soured my trust. Yes, that was why I still cowered away from him, winced when he swore.

But Edward.

I open her eyes with a whisper of lashes and a gentle inhale. I can see him sleeping, through the glass this time (the wall is back down). The sharp slope from his broad shoulders to narrow waist, and (blushing) I see the strange firm shape of his behind. Turned away from me, he is quite the sight and sculpture to see… like a work of art, like a god of ancient times. He looks so vulnerable, lying there simply in his skin, that I cannot help but feel no anxiety at all. I imagine what he must be dreaming.

His side rises and falls like a ponderous tide, muscles lax and body wholly disengaged. A body so muscular is truly a weapon, but sleep sheathed it for the time being. I draw in a ragged breath as he turns to lie on his back, stretching his arms with effortless grace above his head. Fisting his hands closed and pulling their length tight, he shudders and relaxes. His arms askew, pouting lips slightly apart, and toss of bronze hair against the white of his sheets and pillow. Incredible.

I myself turn onto my back, and begin taking account of my body. The repeitive shocks did not hurt nearly as much as the repetitive impact with the floor. I was careful to shut down, to force myself to be numb. And his encouragement to me obviously helped. I feel for him, since I know his pain is not only emotional but physical.

The wall begins to rise.

My terror comes swiftly, since this means that the voice is actively watching them. But at once, I feel a wave of calm over me at the thought of his company. Steeling myself, I rise and limp over to his bed, sinking down softly into the mattress and snuggling up to his side. He almost unconciously draws me in close with a massive arm, turning onto his side to face and cradles me. His breath whispers warmly over my face, sharing his peace with me.

And I feel safe.


	6. Chapter 6

BPOV- past

Humming cautiously, more to fill an oppressive silence than to form a tune, I move around the kitchen. With the oven and stovetop going I need to be completely present, and not dozing off uselessly as I am so prone to do. Charlie would likely be home just in time for his dinner as I have his routine down cold. Coming home to a lukewarm dinner would not do, and would only serve to prove my thoughtlessness.

My nose wrinkles as I chop red onion, tossing cilantro into the skillet obscene looking cut meat. I have a certain issue with red meat, as the tissue and fat and tenderness just turns my stomach. Charlie expects certain things of me, however, and I do well to keep my nausea to myself.

Reaching for a hot pad to the left of the stove, a delicate motion catches the corner of my eye. It's not so much a movement as a disturbance of the quiet kitchen, quiet save for my humming having ceased and my work sizzling in the heat. My stomach plummets to the very roots of my feet and I am frozen to the kitchen tile. He is home and he is creeping about. He makes his presence known when he wants it known, and my terror has betrayed my intrusion of his privacy. I know better, I know to ignore him until he comes to find me but

he came in so quietly somehow and I

am not done with his dinner and I

a flush of displaced air raises the hairs on the back of my neck and he is behind me at once. Breathing. I can smell the pressed clothes that march stiffly along his skin. I can almost hear the wink of his badge in the late-lingering afternoon sunshine.

"Hello Isabella. Respond."

"Hello father."

"Is my dinner finished, Isabella? Respond."

"No, sir, but-

His baton snaps the backs of my knees to attention, and I sink to the floor of the kitchen before the oven. I bite back tears, but a wounded gasp fled my lips before I could hold it. I feel my bladder let go a little and clamp my legs tighter together. He has surprised me, true, but I can still mollify him and escape true punishment if I keep my wits about me. The hit from the baton, like a love-tap, compared to what I am due if I continue to be such a bad girl. Explanations fall in vain on Charlie's ears, and we would finish our interaction more quickly if I could own my own guilt. Peace, Bella, and think.

"Do you think I worked all day long today, making money to feed your sorry fucking ass, so that I could come home and wait for a dinner?"

A trick. I remain silent. Heat blazes under my cheekbones and I refuse to turn around and invite further anger.

"Do you think I keep you here to loaf around all fucking day, day dreaming and twiddling your fingers?"

I think of the fresh sheets waiting for him upstairs, stare down at the painstakingly scrubbed tile, call to mind the shelves dusted and the fixtures shining and… no. I am sure I timed dinner incorrectly and I deserve this. Charlie is harsh with me but I have been a bad girl today. He must be hungry and it's just a simple task really…

(but Bella you do so much for him Bella you are hungry how long since you ate Bella)

…no, Charlie feeds me when I follow instructions and contribute to our way of life. I am ungrateful and thus prone to mistakes such as these. Right? Yes…

His hand is in my hair and the roots of it burn, my skull is pulled sharply backwards and through the tops of my eyelashes I can see him at last. We are a poignant sight to see, him standing crisp and tall and strong behind me, baton in hand, tower of authority, and me, bent backwards and loose in submission. From somewhere deeper within my mind, a wanton hiss 'you quite literally bend over backwards for this bad man Bella, he is the bad man, and you are nothing if not the good girl'.

He smiles a Cheshire cat grin.

EPOV- present

Things have gone easier for Bella over the past few days.

There are occasional periods of inactivity for the voice, which I have always taken to mean he is engaged in a day job, or perhaps has even left for a trip of some kind. We have no way of judging time here. The lights are always on, save for when he has chosen to play a game in the darkness. However, even without the aid of the sun or a clock, one's body makes its own rhythms that create days and nights. Bella initially had no rhythm at all, battered as she was. I have not been able to get any information from her about who she was on the outside, but it was not a good place for her. She initially slept almost non-stop. This exhaustion was not helped by the first few times that the voice played with us. He was rougher than usual with this new girl, something that ripped at my heart since she was already so broken down.

Broken down is not quite the right word however. She is so strong, I can already tell. Things terrify her, and frequently- I would never mention it, but she has very physical reactions to the voice I don't think she's aware of. She had a few accidents when shocked over the earliest period after her arrival, speaking perhaps to other long-term abuse. I only wish she would let me in so I could better understand what she was put through. I tend to get worked up and sweat when the voice plays with me, but a near constant shaking plagues Bella. It puts me in mind of Tanya's horrible ticks she developed but I think it's more a fear thing. She lives like a prey animal, constantly anxious for her next meal.

On that front, we have been fortunate.

She came in so small that even the voice must have known she would simply die from lack of nutrition. The other girls begged or threw tantrums, sometimes directing their anger at me, which was immensely entertaining for him. I cannot manage my own anger well and… I never meant to hurt any of them. But being here did something to you.

Bella does not lie on the bed so much as she is gingerly curled upon it. She picked up a disturbing habit of sleeping on the floor previously that I take to be a result of the shock of being here. The worst part of being under the voice's control is being degraded, and he especially delights in treating the girls like animals. I want her on the bed, and once I expressed that she never once strayed back. The wall is down now, and has been for several periods of waking-time for us. I cannot sleep when the voice is away for a length of time. It seems to distort time, drawing everything out, and I live in constant anticipation of the collar humming to life. It is harder to be at peace without his occasional intervention, if this can be believed.

Her side rises and falls, skin crudely stretched over the cut of her pelvic bone. It looks almost painful, but certainly is less pronounced than when she first arrived. She has gained maybe five pounds. Her relatively quick weight gain leads me to believe she could be at a healthy weight if we make it out of this…

But there is unlikely to be a we.

I fear she will not survive his favorite game. He has spared her thus far, perhaps as part of his effort to make her well. Spared her in a certain sense… she has two cuts on her arms, and three on her stomach. I tried to make those as clean as possible to save her bad scarring if she makes it. But, he has spared her the worst game of all.

The wall, still for so many sleeps, rises.

Its motion startles me, despite how used to it I have become. This time I almost did not expect him to return. But as surely as the world outside has gone on without us, the wall will rise and the voice will join us once more.

"Edward, wake her, or I will do it for you."

I burst from my lounge on the bed, racing towards Bella. I don't make it however, as I knew I wouldn't (another favorite game) and she contorts in a spasm of pain. She is awake so suddenly that her eyes seem to burst from her head, and the scream that comes from her is shocking. I hear her make only the slightest sounds unless completely against her will. She sounds like a whipped dog. The scream dissolves into sobs that she works to hush. Clutching her knees to her chest, she rocks in a child's attempt to self-soothe.

I reach her bed but I have drastically slowed (startling her results in embarrassing reactions for both of us). I sit on the edge, wanting for the world of me to reach out and hold her but knowing better.

"Edward, fuck her."

Her head swivels towards me, skin like china and eyes swimming with tears.


	7. Chapter 7

AN: loving the reviews. Encouraging me to update more frequently, big time. No, in response to one of y'all, I am completely unaffiliated with SAW. Got a kick out of that.

BPOV

Twin green lights searched my own eyes.

Edward's face was devastated. At the sound of the voice's command, I had been shaken further into panic. I had been bad, sleeping on the bed lately. But it was so hard to be good. Although I know I can trust Edward, his physical presence implies to me that I ought to obey him. He is so strong and I cannot say I don't know he will never hurt me. He has before. Of course, the voice asked it of him, and he looked so pained…

But now, this last command.

He dips to my ear, breath hot against the side of my skull and making my very bones quake in terror. No one this close, please, God no. Trust or no trust. He is naked, and he has been told to… I wince. That word. That word. That word that word that

I am being lain out. He has swept my arms from behind me, where they held me up, two thin reeds holding a trembling girl. A bad girl. He knees across from me, between my legs, moving them apart with a firm hand. He is being so firm with me. Gentle, but his eyes have left me.

They spark green no longer, they are a dulled olive like a sullied gem. His hair falls before them, and he looks up at me from below my bandaged belly. His eyes almost look like they are pleading with me to forgive him, but I know that is the voice that asks it of him. I must trust him. I must.

A wave of strength washes over me, the likes of which I have not felt in years. I can trust this man. He has been kind when he can be. I close my eyes against the motion of his hand on himself. Pumping. We are both slaves here. There is nothing I can do but survive, as I always have. I survived Charlie, I survived nearly starving as a street urchin. I can survive this strange prison with the help of my sometimes abuser. He does not mean it he doesn't I know that he

inside me.

At least he is quick about it. Swift and sure, hesitant only to break the last thing in me that was never broken. My eyes fly open at the deep belly-pain, unlike anything I've ever endured before. His meet my own, shock and horror written deep in his again vibrant eyes.

He does not mean to hurt me, he does not wish to hurt me.

He is seized with a sudden ferocity that for once captivates me, rather than terrorizes me. His head dips down to mine and he presses his lips to mind. A chaste kiss, a short distance away from an animalistic act.

I feel as though I should be burning with terror. I feel as though I should be consumed with the shame of it all. I am not panicked. I am…

Each stroke inside me is like a promise as Edward moves his mouth on mine. I cannot think any longer on it or I will dissolve into tears. His hand is moving between us and it strokes a clenching sensation that… oh.

I feel my terror melt away; he is trying to help me. My lips move against his entirely on their own, while my eyes allow only tears out and no light in. Against my own will I am… enjoying this. He cradles me with one arm, and it does not feel like an invasion, like a threat that I may be squeezed for being bad. He cradles me and it is as if he is rocking me into a sweet escape. I think nothing of the room, the voice, the nightmare we live. I can only feel fullness, and an itch towards an unknown goal. Faster. I move against him; he smiles against my teeth.

"Yes, beautiful Bella. We can make it." Yes. I want to make it. I cannot respond, I think only moans and all thoughts have fled.

Like a burst of warm light, sensation races under my skin and my eyes burst open. My cry (out loud! I know this is bad) reaches its height and I can now hear the squeaking of the bed, Edward's desperate grunts. He twitches deep down there, and slides gently out of me, and it is a good thing because whatever I achieved has washed me over in shame.

A rising in my throat, a sob, no, worse, I retch. Heaving, my shoulders seem to draw together and fold my torso in half. I am bawling. I am screaming. I am dissolving.

Edward begins to cry.

EPOV

A rape. A literal snatching, a quite honest taking away.

When I felt myself break her, I nearly broke down then. None of the other girls were virgins, none. I have never deflowered a soul. It felt easier somehow, something they were not used to but could accept. A necessary variation on an act they had done before. To survive. None refused; their fatal refusals had been of other acts. This little girl could not refuse.

She has never refused anyone, I know this now. She has only been taken from, no one has ever asked. She accepted me with shock but with submission… it would have been harder if she had tried to fight me. We would have both been shocked silly, and I would have needed more time to prepare myself… horrible.

The voice could not have asked me to do something worse to her, save kill her. I feared I would break her spirit, and he would tire of her shortly… but my kiss revitalized her. I was able to get her to cum, of all things. Incredible. Perhaps only because she was too shocked to understand what was happening?

I thought things were going well, considering the circumstances. But she came out of her haze, where she was safe and was not terrified for once. Her screams drove me away. I sit in the corner of her room, trying to collect myself. It is unfair to appear this upset around her. I must be a dependable figure for her, on which this mistrustful girl can place her trust. I feel less like a solid and stable man for her and more like a sapling bent in half by the wind.

My weakness has been and will be my downfall.

I look to her, I am still in the corner (coward) and she lies upon the bed. Her legs lie open still, she is frozen in her position but her skin seems to leap about with a trembling. I blink through my tears (coward) and move towards her in an inelegant stumble. I do not stand. I cover her body with mine, I impose my physical presence once more. I can feel her center hot on my belly. The rest of her is chilled unnaturally. Skin to skin, the length of her beneath me, I can feel my presence grounding her. She is so afraid of me, but she trusts me, she cannot bear to trust me yet I provide security. Such is the nature of our captivity.

I fear that this girl is the one too many and I will be driven quite insane.

But for now I am here with her, quite here with her, and I can feel her body pooling into the stillness of exhaustion. I kiss her gently, to the crook of her jaw on her neck, and she sighs with a slow shiver. Her screams gone, she cries silently with the sweetest hiccups of a baby. She is a baby. Small, mine to protect, mine to nurture. Not for him, the voice. Not his at all. His perverse care for her that could turn any moment to torture. Nourishing her so that she might be deprived of nourishment later.

The exquisite sense of powerlessness. If something ever happened to him… no one would find us. Here we would waste away surely, dying of dehydration, starvation, long after too late.

With Bella lying beneath me, I feel that I must lend her the strength to follow his rules, play his game, wait and survive by surviving. But as much as I may appear to her, or to myself as the protector, at the end of the day I can do nothing.

I begin to hum in her ear, hanging my head over her shoulder, pressing my face into the bed. I keep my weight off her beyond what gives security, I cannot bear to part our skin. Her chill is a balm to my fiery powerlessness, here once more I care for her to serve my own need to be a savior. Having failed Tanya and those before her.

BPOV

It has been a great length of time since Edward and I were first forced to be together physically. I do not know a word that is not vulgar for what we must do. I believe it has been a great length of time, but I suppose that any length could have passed. Our periods of sleeping and waking are wildly unknowable. I am hesitant to say I have been a good girl, obeying orders, for I have become the wanton creature Charlie always knew I was. I do not panic when the voice asks Edward and I to be together. I look forward to it in the most shameful depths of my soul. I know how much it hurts him to cause my suffering and thus I am too ashamed to admit that I suffer only with the knowledge that I cannot do the right thing. I never pleased Charlie, I cannot please Edward, and the voice knows me to be the bad girl that I am.

I woke shackled to the bed a few sleeping-times ago, by chains that chafe relentlessly at my wrists and ankles. My bottom was lifted slightly off the bed by a pillow, and Edward was told to be together with me so many times that even as bad as I am, I began to cry. We were both kept in a mindless haze for a period of time, and did not speak about it upon resurfacing. The owner of the voice must have been within our rooms while we slept, because I had no dirty sheets upon waking, despite the fact I had no way to toilet.

Edward has told me that there were other girls before me. He whispers in my ear when we are together, so that the voice will not hear. His words are barely a breath of air, they slip into my mind with a dreamy quality that makes me wonder if I imagine them. He says I must do whatever is asked of me. He says if we listen, we will survive long enough to be found.

I long for the plainness of conversation. I would give a limb to chat with Edward, but our every word must be stolen while I am gasping against a burning itch in my belly. He plays with me down there, I know, to bring pleasure into our torture. But craving this rape is turning my mind.

We both have grown senseless together, it is a condition of the madness we are held in. We speak only when necessary. We touch constantly, speaking more in moans and hums than anything else. I fear he has driven us from sanity by keeping our minds in states of suspended animation.

I open my eyes.

The air feels like air again to me now, upon waking. It has not in some time. There is no stuffiness, no haze of thought, no sheen of sweat and itch of ache. I turn to the warmth beside me, and Edward lies like a fallen angle. His coppery hair a moment away from my own, I instinctively slide towards him. He gathers me up in his half sleep, exhaling into my collarbone. The harsh bite of the metal feels a little softer.

Blinking his eyes open, "Bella."

"Yes, we're back."

His eyes pop open, he is wary for us both again. Not wolfish, but like a particularly savvy deer with an old and healed gunshot wound on his shoulder. He searches my own eyes for something, and holds me too tightly with a furtive glance at the camera.

"How long this time? Do you remember?"

I do not answer. I do not like to not know the answer to his question. Something in me still shrinks away from him, lest any sort of temper make itself known to this bad girl.

"Bella."

"…no."

I wince preemptively, he frowns at me.

His lips grow thin, he moves back onto one arm on his side to survey me. I am a mottled flesh and blue, thumbprints on my hips and chafing on my inner thighs. My bandages from my stomach have been removed, my early-days incisions since healed. It has been a long time. Many periods of wakefulness and sleep, and I suspect that the sleep lasts longer than we know. He has been touching us whilst we dream in the sleep he made for us. I shudder at the thought. I shudder thrice over at Edward's furious stare at my body.

He knows that I am bad, and it makes him angry, I am sure.

He sits up violently, and I make a chirp of a scream.

"God fucking damnit Bella, look at you!"

Tears.

He turns and grabs my chin roughly. "No, baby girl, look what I have done to you."

He pulls my face down, grazes his thumb over the marks along my sides. I look at him in worry. His eyes are so sad… he is sad for having hurt me. I hum at him, and try to slip into his lap. I can appease him, I can be good and show him that I am quite alright. His palm, flat across my breastbone, may as well be a slap in the face. I freeze and retreat.

Hugging my knees to my chest, I watch him over their tops. He stands and moves towards his room, reaching his bed when the wall begins to slide down. I begin to cry, keeping the noise of it to myself lest I bother him. I do not know exactly what I have done to make him so angry, but I know I can do better in the future. Now is just the time to give him some space.

A wave of nausea slams into me, and I heave over the side of the bed. The force of it sends me flat against the sheets, and I heave again. The glass wall reaches the floor.


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: Sorry for how short this is. Trying to give y'all something at all! Another update soon.**

BPOV

When the nausea came I guess I could have known.

The voice that kept asking us to be together, the voice that came to us while we slept and cared for us in our drugged stupor. It was as though he stirred the air and world around me with a great hand, and reality oozed away from me. But we have spent time aware once more.

Quite a bit of time, in fact. I know this in my very bones, I know it without the rise and set of the sun to show me. I know it in my belly.

I know it in my belly where a living thing now curls.

We have been bad, together. I have been worse.

Edward, we made this thing.

I gasp and my eyes fly open, I am stirring but it is not me at all, it is an alien and foreign thing. Awake.

EPOV

Bella is quite pregnant.

I knew it would happen. It is why the others died. They miscarried, whether voluntarily or involuntarily. Their refusal to bear this commanded child is what killed them. Bella has done it, she has been strong as I knew she would be. I have taught the poor virgin to love, and love thoroughly, and the wanton girl craves my touch now that he keeps me from her. She does not know that it is a twisted love, a commanded love to bring about a commanded child. If, somehow (please God) we were to ever leave here, I would love her properly. Without a voice to watch us, without collars to guide us, without her often shackled to the bed like a brood mare.

I have preformed my stud services.

The worst part about getting my girls pregnant is that the torture does not stop. His games do not stop. The voice is the worst sort of paradox, he keeps us as livestock to be bred yet loves to neglect us.

Bella's stomach is not the adorable baby 'bump' of glowing mommies-to-be on the Internet. It juts out sharply from her emaciated frame. She could be anywhere between fifteen and twenty five weeks along, for all I know. I have limited experience in this sort of thing- none of the girls made it past an initial adominal hardening. The voice has provided my food as much on schedule as I know, but always with Bella on the other side of the wall. I tried to stow away a roll for her under my mattress, but my slight of hand trick did no good. My skin felt raw under the collar, he delivered his retribution with no mercy.

When she moves around the room, she has taken to the slinking of nervous prey. She moves little now, and when she does it was all at once. A darting, along the walls, knees bent and wincing. Her belly seems to push forward even when she is stationary, like the little creature wanted out of her in search of more food. Her paper-skin is stretched tight over her breastbone, but her breasts swell tentatively as time draws on. She is beautiful still, like a doll made of a slender sort of string, but she is ghoulish in appearance. The ba-thing inside of her sinks her eyes into her skull and draws the flesh in close to the ridges of her spine. It is taking whatever of her it can find. A robust thing it must be, to have survived such an inhospitable planet as its mother.

The glass wall begins to rise, and she is quite the frightened doe. Her impossibly big eyes dart to mine, lock in, and read permission there. Along the wall she sidles to me, climbing onto the bed I lie on. I stretch lazily, we have had a quiet time lately and perhaps this shall continue.

"Edward," she begins, voice raspy from disuse.

I flash my eyes to her in warning, (he can hear us). "Yes?"

"Feel, feel this."

She pulls my hands to her swollen belly in such a show of trust I am quite taken aback. Her skin is taught but soft, impossibly warm. And I feel it.

Like the wings of a butterfly breathing softly against my palm, there is life stirring under her skin. I pull back in alarm, and her eyes well up in imagined rejection. But I quickly place my hands back, eager for more of that odd tickle.

Incredible.

Biting her lip, she stares up at me, boldly and into my eyes. It is as if this showing of growth, this showing of a living thing within her has given her a new sort of strength. There is a line of determination set into her brow. She sits cross legged, encircling her ball of a belly with the whole of her frame. She has never looked quite so beautiful as now, a determined little shell around this seat of beginning, cradle of life.

I rise up on my arm and pull her jaw towards me, kiss her and make her mine. My lips search for hers and find them, she kisses me sweetly and with the sort of eagerness I could not have hoped for when I first met the scared and scarred girl.

A minor shock passes between us, not of passion but of punishment.

She flies back quickly, rising with a sureness and speed quite unlike her. She is bold and standing upright, stiff backed with her indignant belly pushing out. She cradles it, and shouts!

"You wanted this child! You ordered us to make this! How dare you shock me, it could be killed!"

Hot and angry tears drive down her face, I feel them as I clamp my hand down over her mouth. Stupid, stupid! She is giving him the reaction he wants, she is giving him reason to punish us. She is shaking now, determined in mind but her body betrays her. I lift her and move her quickly and gently to the bed.

"shh, shh, he'll…" the shock comes for me instead. Agony.


	9. Chapter 9

**AN: Thanks for the reviews... it motivated this outpouring! Another installment for y'all, and during exams no less... please keep your thoughts coming. I would love to know your theories for what will happen to our 3.5 characters.**

JBPOV

Despite the months that had flown by since Bella's disappearance, Jake felt the pain of her loss as strong as ever.

He had managed to pull himself off the streets somehow. A friend from his hometown had connected him to a construction job, tied to completion of the project. But when the project ended, Jake had been kept on. He was a hard and honest worker, especially with Bella as his motivation.

He needed credibility before going to the police. He thought they were unlikely to care much for a high-risk victim like her. She had not been born on the streets, but she disappeared off them. They all came from somewhere; Jake knew that better than anyone else. But sometimes the police department simply had more high profile concerns on its hands.

The simple fact was he needed to clean himself up, and he knew that. He would work to find his girl, but he would do it as a citizen that operated within the normal bounds of the system.

He exhausted the people he knew, diving deep for information and coming back up for air only when he was keeping up appearances. He got an apartment, a shit hole but at least he had a paystub to waive in a landlord's face. He could not help but lie in its one room at night and imagine her there to share it with him. He knew she could probably never be with him the way he wanted her to be, but she could be there at least. That would be enough.

Doggedly, he searched for her. He pounded down doors, waded through drug addicts in buildings that ought to be blown sky high. He was searching for a needle in a haystack. Plenty of men watched the girls that huddled in alleyways. There were so few of them that were not working girls, they drew the eye regardless. Fewer men had long blonde hair, but that could be helped. The idiot he pounded for information by the riverbank had led to more reliable sources. The fucker that stole his baby girl had some more… identifiable features.

There were times during his search that he felt he ought to turn things over to the police. It was slow work: a friend of a friend would know a little something, but finding the next friend could take weeks. He just knew in his heart that no one would search for Bella like he did, like she was pulling him and guiding him along. He felt this impossible attachment to her still, more than infatuation or lust, but rather a tie that ran to his lost girl. A string tied to his ankle that ran under the door and he knew not what lay beyond.

He was established, he had credibility, and just yesterday he had made what he considered to be the final discovery. He knew who had taken her, and it was time to go to the people who could take him down.

Jake cleared his throat, and strode up to the desk. Despite his imposing figure, he felt daunted by how the desk lounged forbiddingly beyond the entrance. The building was humming with activity, and every uniform that darted by him made him do a little jump with his eyes. Jake had been off the street for over six months now, but he still felt like he was about to be scolded for sleeping on a public bench.

He cleared his throat again- fucking tickle, now of all times- and slapped five month's worth of digging and intimidating onto the desk. The secretary snapped to attention and scrutinized him from under a pair of stern readers. Jake felt a bead of cold sweat run down the cut of his shoulder blade.

"I'm here to see the Chief. I've got information on a missing person."

BPOV

I open my eyes, and know that I am clear. The fog that hangs over me so often has been lifted. I yawn, daring to stretch out my limbs and wiggle my toes. The ball of life that feels haphazardly attached to me balloons out. I try to lift my legs to see my toes, but my muscles grasp at the strength and miss it. I shudder to think that such a task is too much for me, but the fact remains.

I love the baby I carry. I do, I really do. I see the way that Edward seems to glare at my belly, where she nestles loved and safe. I know it worries him because when the voice plays his games, the baby takes all that she can get.

I would love to be out of here, wherever here is, and grow my baby in the sunshine. With plenty of vitamins, proper nutrition, prenatal care… everything I cannot give to her in here. I feel as though she is a she, although I suppose I will not know until I meet her. It pains me to think of all the ways I could keep her safe if I were free…

I never was free, though. I struggle to remember this, for all that was before my time here feels as a dream. I was under Charlie's watchful eye, and I moved from this to life ruled by necessity and struggle as a homeless girl. Jake watched me there. Poor Jake- but best to forget him. I do not know if I will ever leave this place, or if I will survive it. Thinking of him does not bring back comfort like it used to, but memories of hunger, chill, and the pain of losing him as a companion. As a companion. Of course, I should abandon him, as it is my nature to fail those that I love.

I am failing this little one already, I know it. I have tried very hard to be the best girl I can be for the voice, in an effort to appease him so that he will nurture me. He can care for me so that my body can care for her. But as the shell for my little pearl, I fear I have grown too bold.

There was an incident, and I yelled at the voice. Edward suffered for it. It is very bad of me to think this thought, but I am quite grateful that he was dealt the shock. I am certain it must hurt her too, and I cannot bear it.

I feel as though I am disloyal to Edward now, but this disloyalty is out of necessity. He seeks only to keep me safe- I think he would much prefer it if she did not exist.

His fingers trace my collarbone- he is stirring awake. No, he is and has been awake, I think.

I meet his eyes shyly, I feel like a little girl peaking from behind her mother's skirts. I am in the best of moods today, despite my melancholy introspection. I am clear again. Pieces of my time here remain untold, lost to the far depths of Edward's and my own memories. Our imprisonment is like dipping in and out of consciousness, a choppy narrative that I cannot fathom.

I wonder how long we have been here, I marvel at how time lost its meaning, I wonder if it shall ever gain it again.

He pecks my lips with his own, cocks his neck back and tosses me a crooked grin. We are both happy to be back with the world of the living.

His green, green eyes search mine, perhaps confirming that my mind yet live there. I shift the bulb of my weight, moving from my back to my side to face him. Unabashed in my nakedness like a ridiculous, wanton girl I feel almost silly. I rub my feet together to warm my chilly toes, and the swell of my belly curves to arc against the mattress.

"Good morning" he mouths at me, smiling through his silence.

"Hello" I smile at him, barely moving my lips. Our closeness through this time together has bloomed quicker than my quickening stomach. I am not so afraid of him anymore; he is my ally in this.

He traces the edge of my breast and I am covered in gooseflesh immediately. He crooks a smile at me and bites his lip, teasing my nipple with his finger. He is being so bad today… if the voice is watching, we will surely be punished.

Edward flashes a glance at the camera, but it does not stir. The speaker remains quiet.

He lifts me on top of him so quickly I am disorientated for longer than a moment. He is hard and ready already, eager and willing. He moves me up, and guides me quickly down onto himself in such a quick movement he takes my breath away. Edward hisses, my eyes roll back into my head. His hands find some purchase to the sides of the small of my back… where love handles ought to be, if I were not so revoltingly thin. Embarrassed, I banish the thought from my mind as a wave of pleasure rolls over me.

I throw my head back as Edward pushes me up and pulls me back down, moving me along his length with ease and vigor. He is so strong, and… oh…

He loves me slowly and sweetly, carefully moving us in tandem. Every thrust hits home and I am shivering and dripping all at once. I am so bad to enjoy this, but…

I almost cry out, but Edward feels me reach my breaking point and claps his hand over my mouth. We finish together, curled together, my belly nosing in between us.

It is then that I hear it.

A low gasping, the sound of skin slipping quickly over wet skin. He moans, oh God he moans and…

The voice is watching us, he let us do this sinful thing and he is watching, he is watching and he is touching himself.

My eyes burst open and well with tears, I am full of shame.

It is one thing entirely to be told to preform like animals, especially when drugged. But Edward and I, in our haste to snare a stolen moment to ourselves, have forgotten the essential condition of our imprisonment. He takes pleasure from this, a deep sick pleasure.

I retch before I can stop myself, unfortunately just to the side of us on the bed. Edward eases me off of himself, setting me gently as glass beside him. He wipes my mouth with his set in a pained grimace. I see it too. It is yellow bile, just the sour contents of my stomach. No chunks of digesting food… just the sad effort of an organ to continue normally.

I do not cry. Edward needs strength from me now; she needs strength from me now. I try to help him gather the soiled sheet off the bed, but I am quite unable to rise to my knees let alone my feet. He picks me up like a small child, and brings me to my own bed on my side. Lying there, I curl up as much as my body allows and watch him. The glass wall begins to slip down, and I bite back tears again, viciously, I will not cry!

Edward sleeps with his back to the wall, his back to me.

The baby does not seem to find any rest, and neither do I.


	10. Chapter 10

**AN: Thank you for your reviews! I would love to hear more from you.**

BPOV

Blowing air out in a huff of frustration, I squeeze my eyes together. I can do this, it's the simplest thing… I place my hands on either side of my thighs, on the bed, and push. I heave myself upwards, onto wobbling knees and feel like a newborn foal. I breathe as calmly as I can and plant my hand solidly on the mirrored wall. My other hand goes to my stomach, smoothing along the side.

Breathe, Bella, breathe.

I keep my left hand on the wall, and turn ever so slightly towards the wall opposite my bed. One foot in front of the other… My hair wisps down into my eyes and I pout by bottom lip and puff up air. The strands don't lift out of my face, they stick to the sweat on my forehead.

I grow weaker every moment, it seems. I am trying to keep my strength up by moving around instead of just lying about in bed. But each time I rise it seems harder and harder.

There is a plate across the room that cradles my most precious gift, most recently. The voice must have slipped it to me at some point while I slept. I have never seen either door open, but Edward says he has. Only once, but the ever-so slight seams in the wall across from our beds betray them. He said it slid open so silently he thought he was dreaming. He faded back out of consciousness before he could see our captor. And the wall was as before, a maddening mirror reflecting your own face at you in an endless taunt.

I manage to make it to the plate.

There is a peanut butter sandwich on it that I have divided into eighths. I have caved already and eaten one, and my stomach begs and pleads for another. But I know eating too much too fast after so long (at least, I think it has been ages) will only make me sick and keep what my baby needs from her.

The bread is so perfect. Lovely and soft, airy and inviting looking. I should love to bury my face in it like a pillow fresh from the wash. It is a little stiffer now for having sat in the air, but I do not mind. I am just happy to have more than water, or little crackers.

I take the smallest nibble I can of the piece, and it is ecstasy. I hum in delight, and eat the rest too quickly. And another piece… but I feel as though my stomach can handle it! I vow to myself to keep it down.

The wall is up but Edward is elsewhere.

Not that there is much place else for him to be, but he is doing something on the far side of our space, between the bed and the wall so I cannot see what he is up to.

I tap the ground next to me as loudly as I dare, lest I draw the voice's attention. I try to be quiet in case he is not watching us actively, so that he does not start.

Edward's head of touseled hair swivels in my direction, and he peers over at me from under his long hair. We look so shaggy, as it has been God knows how long since either of us have gotten a haircut. I love it, to be truthful. Edward looks like he is some sort of man from the wilderness and it allows me to imagine we live off in the woods somewhere, secluded by choice. Rather than in this sterile, sleek fishbowl of a room.

He walks over to me, his legs strong and true with muscle. Edward has been kept hale and hearty for a long time now, and I cannot help but resent him for it. He sits next to me on the ground.

The nakedness factors so little into our time here now, but it still seems to strike me for a moment every now and then. The human body is so strange, and being naked constantly just adds a whole other level to interaction. My whole body seems to stir to attention when I am close to him.

Edward takes my hands in his and traces my wrists lightly so that he tickles me. I smile and close my eyes. His fingers ghost over my skin and make it rough as it pebbles. His touch is cool and like a breeze… to have a breeze whisper over my skin again!

I open my eyes and look into his.

We spend a lot of time like this, sitting together in silence. Silence always meant safety for me, and I have no desire to draw any undue attention to myself here. Looking into his eyes I imagine what he would say to me, if he could. Beyond our furtive whispering here and there, and limited lip reading, we can communicate no other way. But I would challenge anyone to look into someone's eyes for an extended period of time and not know them in some sort of primal way.

Doing this is what first led me to trust Edward. It was hard in the beginning, especially when the voice made him do very bad things because I had been a bad girl. When he cut me, I felt as though I could never look him in the eye again. There is something far more naked about the spilling of blood than the lack of clothes we live with every day. It was as though I was being incredibly lewd.

But time does heal some wounds and most of my cuts and things have faded to scars. The voice has played only hunger games with me for a long while now… and nothing with Edward. The wall has remained mostly up… we are enjoying some period of peacetime at the moment. So I am happy to have bits of cloud-bread in my stomach and this man before me.

I look into his eyes and know that I may trust him. I see only affection there, and kindness. He cares for me so… he looks at me like Jake does. I know this, though I cannot fathom it.

Charlie always told me that I was not meant to be loved.

I know neither of these men love me, but I cannot help but dream. I cannot keep Jake from my mind and I cannot help my feeling that Edward could love me one day… if I were so good he had to.

I shift my eyes away from his after I am not sure how long, and try to stand. He lets me attempt it, though I almost plow him over with my belly when I turn to find my footing. His hands and shoulders guide me up, providing a stable place to set my hand.

I am gasping by the time I am up, clenching his hand in both of mine.

Edward looks at me, worried. He opens his mouth to speak, mouths something at me, but I am just too tired to try and puzzle it out. I read his concern through the energy that flows between us, and squeeze his hand.

He picks me up and sets me on the bed, impatient with my dizziness and weakness. I know that I ought to try harder, but I am truly making a very sincere effort. I reach for his eyes to explain his, cupping his cheek with one freed hand.

He nods in understanding to me, his curls bobbing lightly in their own assent.

I feel like I flop in slow motion down onto my side, sighing with the effort of it all. He has gone from me, then he is back with my plate. He hands me another bite of sandwich but I feel the nausea rising and push it away.

The door opens, and I see the virgin wall broken for the first time with my own eyes. I see who steps through.


	11. Chapter 11

**AN: I know I left y'all hanging last time! Thank you for your thoughts. They keep me going... I spent some studying time (whoops) whipping this together for you. Lots of love and don't worry, it's raining now but eventually it won't be!**

**PAST**

EPOV

I ricochet off the four walls, pacing and pulling at my hair. This cannot be fucking happening. Where am I, how the fuck did I get here, how do I get out… my mind is racing.

I'm naked, which is not the worst of it but it ranks. I see those fucking video cameras and I don't like the idea of some sick shit watching me. I tried to tie a blanket into a toga of sorts, but my new… my new GODDAMN COLLAR kept me from that. I don't think it burned my skin but it sure felt like fire.

The room is deceptively simple. Three mirrored walls, one transparent that keeps me from my neighbor. I feel imperfections in the far wall that suggest a door. There is a spout and a drain, a toilet, a simple bed. A knife. The fucking cameras. A speaker.

And a girl.

She has been watching me since I woke from my… I wasn't fucking sleeping. I can't remember much from just before here… before I was taken? But I think I must have been drugged. My skull still feels like it's in a vice… a fog too, I cannot see or think clearly.

My temper is flaring again, and my nostrils as my head whips to her. It's so fucking maddening, the way she is just sitting and waiting. For what? She must be a prisoner here with me. Her room is identical, and she is quite naked.

I know the gentlemanly thing to do would be to avoid looking directly at her, exposed. But she stares at me so boldly, like she's daring me to look. Bitch.

The thought surfaces so quickly it takes me aback, but I feel as though I may explode and her face is so fucking blank. I sigh unsteadily and resume running my fingernails along the seams that I think indicate a door. I am beginning to wear my skin raw, but there's not much else-

A shock.

Of fucking course. It's a little one compared to what I know this unseen asshole has got for me, it's just a little prod- 'hey. I'm still watching'- I understand the sentiment as clearly as if it was shouted in my ear.

Back to the wall, I slide down the wall and fall onto my ass. Fuck it all. I'm not getting out anytime soon, this is clear.

The wall begins to rise.

The transparent glass wall, I mean. It's sliding up and I'm on my feet quickly. Her room is just like mine but I want to go in and see if there's some way to escape hers.

I slow, though. She has a collar too. But there's a… a dog dish on the floor. Her bed has no sheets. There is a metal cage in her room, but it's so small that…

I feel like I'm looking into an animal's pen. I think that I am, in some way.

She stands, and the sight of her all at once makes me weak in the knees in the worst way.

Her arm hangs just so, at a slightly… wrong angle from her body. She is very slender, but her figure is undiminished by the way her bones seem to curve out of her skin. Her hair is honestly the color of dried blood and it's so curly it has a life of its own. Her eyes, green and piercing, burn into mine although I cannot yet meet them.

Her skin is covered in black and blue… bruises in the strangest… handprints, I think. There are wounds on her stomach, on her breastbone… some open and weeping, others healing, some weeks old. Her nose is crooked though I do not think it's some charming feature. She has had untreated broken bones, here. And I understand.

I am not leaving anytime soon. And whoever was here before me did this.

"Who… who the fuck…"

She lifts her finger to her lips, quieting me. For all her injury, she looks like a goddess. I gulp and nod. She points to the camera, and I understand. Whoever keeps us here can hear us.

She sits on the bed with catlike grace, and bids me closer to her. She pats the mattress beside her, and I am quick to sit there. I feel like a young boy, but I need to know what this woman knows. It could keep me alive, help me keep her alive…

She gathers her hair, braids it quickly and deftly. She cups her hand to my ear- it's a hot hand, and my pulse quickens. Her breath is flaming against my skin, the shell of my ear, and she begins to whisper.

"Listen, closely. We can speak now but maybe not for a while after. I am Victoria."

I start, to answer, tell her I am Edward, but she hisses a "shhh" and I listen.

"Do what he says, obey best you can. It will keep you alive. It will keep me as unharmed as possible. I sure fucking hope you're a good guy, because as you can see the last one was overzealous."

I knew whoever was here before had done this to her. I could kill him-

"He is dead now. You will be dead if you are not careful. This is all I should say for now. Don't fucking speak."

**CLOSER TO PRESENT**

I can't stand to look over at her room, but I forget sometimes and my eyes stray. I see that mass of red, red hair that looks so dull now. It looks like clotted fucking blood. She lies, so still and prone, in her clotted blood and her clotted fucking blood fucking hair.

Fuck.

I feel like I haven't stopped crying since I first saw her like this. Her broken shell of a body…

No one can be beautiful dead. No one. There is no beautiful death, no lovely bones, no precious corpse. She is ugly now and her body got stiff and then it began to smell.

Her eyes thank God, turned away from my room. But I can see that unnatural half-gaping look through the mirror on her wall. She is looking at herself into eternity.

I can't sleep with her body in here. It feels like a final insult to me. Some part of me always hated her, hated her because I could not protect her. I could not protect her from myself.

I think of her pussy and vomit.

She was such a sexual creature, such a vixen up to the end. She didn't know what he wanted from her, at first would get upset and have me pull out. She and I, writhing, shocked silly, shocked our fucking brains out. But she didn't want to get pregnant, didn't understand she didn't get to fucking WANT THINGS here.

Victoria was doomed before she got here. She could not submit. She thought she would play this game, take things standing up, outsmart him somehow.

But her belly grew tight and she began to swell with child. Our baby. When she finally realized that something had taken up residence within her… she fucking lost it.

She threw herself against the faucet, spigot thing whatever it was in our room. She pummeled her abdomen, in between the teeth-grinding bone-breaking skin-flaming shocks he dealt to her. He lifted the wall and told me to restrain her, but it was like she was possessed.

Blood trickled from between her legs. He told me to snap her neck.

She looked me in the eyes and begged me to kill her.

It wasn't hard, to be honest.

The harder part was her gasping and unnatural stillness afterwards. A broken bird. A bird whose wings cannot communicate with its brain anymore. I brought her head down on the ground, hard, after a moment.

I could not refuse.

The man who had been here before me had taken pleasure in what the voice asked of him. He had delighted in torturing Victoria, raping her. She didn't know for how long, but he turned out impotent. She woke up to him lying quietly dead in his own room. She wasn't sure how the voice had killed him.

Victoria wanted me to stay so that I could guide the next girl. Show her how to live here. How to survive, waiting for rescue. She grew to know me, grew to understand that cut after cut broke my heart. Having sex with her, though as consensual as possible, fucked with me. She watched me vomit after reopening one of her old wounds. She understood my aversion to this.

She told me I was perfect.

Victoria had reached the end of her rope. She could not stay here any longer; she could not handle the baby. And now her corpse is splayed accusatorily in the other room. I can almost hear it whispering to me. It knows I killed her. It thinks I shouldn't have.

I throw my face into my pillow and scream.

**EVEN CLOSER TO PRESENT**

The new girl won't stop making noise.

She screams and cries constantly. She wails at the walls, she beats her head against the wall and kicks me away whenever I come close.

She nearly bellows whenever she is shocked, not even that can quiet her long. She whimpers and cries out in her sleep. My ears ring.

I don't even know her name yet.

It has been some period of time since she arrived, but time has bled together with its usual fluidity. This fourth girl, this girl number four of mine, she is driving me absolutely… absolutely mad. I cannot hear myself think.

The wall begins to slide up, and sound now flows freely between our spaces, unfortunately. She glares at me with her watery brown eyes. She will not allow me to whisper to her, but I gave up all hope of avoiding the voice's attention when it came to her. I tried screaming back at her, but the shocks silenced me.

I cannot reason with someone who does not want to be reasoned with.

The voice crackles to life in my speaker, and his volume is maxed out so I can hear him clear as day.

"Edward, please cut out her tongue."

**JUST BEFORE BELLA'S ARRIVAL**

Tanya has told me she loves me.

Her hair is gold, spun cold, waves and it spills over my lap. Her eyes are the happiest blue… she peers up at me, bats her eyelashes, twists her legs together and swivels her hips. Her breasts, golden with rosy little buds, her hands pull my face down towards hers. She is like sunshine in this prison.

Her skin still glows with fading kisses from the sun of the outside world when I find her. She lays with her arms neatly folded over her ribcage; she looks so peaceful, my sunshine angel. Her hair, like a mane like water it flows down, down over her shoulders.

From beneath her clasped arms, streams of blood that are even still drying. They run little rivers over her cooling skin, her skin that will never again warm me. Her skin that still smelled like summer when she first came her, not so long ago, I KNOW that even though I cannot seem to think of time here and I just had so little with her I just had

I pulled her up into myself, her slender arm slips and drapes downward, the delicate flesh of her wrist flaps open and lies with the stillness of the newly dead.

I cannot bear another.

The next will survive.


	12. Chapter 12

EPOV

When the door opens, all hell breaks loose. My mind dissolves into a panic and a rage.

Before I can completely understand what I am doing, I have lept onto the bed and I crouch over Bella, snarling at the intruder. I know it must be him I know it must be fucking him I know

BPOV

When the door opens, all hell breaks loose. My hands fly to my belly, and I wet myself. Shame burning my cheeks, I stare at the open door. Before, the mirror smooth and unbroken, now it lies ajar…

Men are swarming us instantly. They carry guns that seem comical in their predatory sleekness. Like some sort of science fiction movie gone wrong. My ears are ringing and I hear them shouting to one another but nothing registers.

I touch my face and my hand comes away wet, I am sobbing. Edward is screaming and fighting them. In slow motion, my head swimming, I turn towards him, I smile, everything will be alright…

He is writhing and screaming and cursing the men. Spit flies from his mouth; he looks like a rabid animal. His wild hair I found so charming hangs darkly over his eyes and he looks for all the world an unruly stallion. He is… dangerous.

My mouth open, I turn my head with that infinite slowness again. The men all around me… Edward is afraid for me. It must be because they know why I am here. I am here because I have been bad for so long, and now they are here to… to hurt me I suppose… but this is my salvation… I cannot think straight with all of this screaming

it's Edward screaming and I

I think it's me too.

I can't stop shaking, I can't stop crying. The men are taking the room in, most have flowed back out now that a few have Edward pinned. One speaks harshly into his radio. He strides forward, deeper into what has been my home for this time. He takes one look at me and shouts, "Medic!" into that black box.

I am terrified now. I look down, try to see what he sees.

I see a skeleton, that someone has grotesquely sewed a heavily pregnant and swollen belly onto. I see years of scar tissue, some newcomers, enough bruising to make me a fruit quite worth passing over in a grocery store. In my mind's eye I see my lank hair; in the mirror I see my ghoulish eyes set so far back in my head they are black.

I look to Edward, his face smashed into the floor of our home. We are quite feral. I see that now, I know that this team of men sees how bad I am written plain as day across my body. My transgressions are legible, my whoreish and wanton behavior plain for them to see.

More men into the room, these I know will help me. I have seen an EMT before. They lift me slowly and gently onto the stretcher they brought, strap me in tight. I smile into their eyes, I will hold still, I know how to be good. I know it doesn't look that way, but…

Now I can have some help for my baby. She can grow as she ought to.

The greater the distance grows as I am carried away from Edward, the more panic fills my mind. I try to soothe myself, I rub my belly and relax into the restraints that cradle me. I turn my head just so, the neckbrace was deemed unnecessary apparently. And what I see destroys whatever I thought I knew about my time here.

Another set of doors, one of which is open. Another room, walls mirrored thrice. Another two beds, one with sheets and one without. Another small cage. Another… man and woman. Blank white wall resumes as I pass this sight by. The nightmare is almost gone from my mind when I see

Another room. Three more mirrored walls. A man sobbing as he gestures to an officer, a girl in a crimson pool at his feet. Her belly swells like mine.

Blank wall resumes.

I turn my head back to gaze upward. Sterile ceiling comforts me, it reminds me of my little home. My little space with Edward where I knew how to be a good girl. My hands go to my neck absently, and the lack of collar there brings the taste of bile to my mouth and my hands tremble. They close over nothing. They must have cut it off me at some point…

A female EMT has been speaking to me for some time, but the world of sound has only just returned to me.

"Honey? What's your name, sweetheart? You need to tell me your name." Her voice is soft and slips over me. I roll my eyes to her, whites showing and I smile weakly.

"Bella."

Her eyes widen, she grabs my hand and squeezes it. Lifting her shoulder to her mouth, she speaks into the little radio there. "It's Bella, we've got Bella."

I sigh. Something about being so contained in this stretcher is soothing me in the midst of this chaos. I try not to think of Edward, I need to only think of my baby girl now. I will be very good to these people, I will do what they ask and I know they will care for her.

We are outside now. I forget exactly how we emerged but we did. The building that first looms above me and then grows smaller is so ordinary it takes my breath away. It looks like some sort of warehouse, but not abandoned or horrific looking, or even sad looking. It is all clean lines and neat appearances. This takes my breath away- our rooms were just so.

The sky is overcast, but I have to close my eyes anyway. The warmth of the sun on my skin… did I ever imagine I would feel that again? I lose its delicious touch when I am lifted into the waiting ambulance. The doors are shut and I alone with the EMT who… I know her somehow, something just passed between us but it has slipped my mind. I smile and close my eyes again.

"Bella, Bella please stay awake a little longer. My name is Angela, I need your help."

I open my eyes, feeling wary again. I must help her if I can, I need to do what they ask of me. They could take me back to the voice. But I want to go to the hospital, I want them to see my baby. I feel so weak already, I feel like every ounce of life is draining from my body the further I am drawn from what has been my home.

I nod, because I read patience and also concern in her eyes.

"Do you know where you are?" I shake my head.

"Do you know who has kept you here?" No.

"Do you know… do you know how far along you are?" No. I smile sweetly, and reach for her hand. She gives it to me and I place it reverently on my stomach. Someone has covered me in a blanket and the absence of nakedness and exposure is alarming and strange. But my baby girl kicks against her hand.

"Do you feel that?" I ask her, in a whisper, my voice scratching and hoarse from disuse. She nods to me, grins with teary eyes. "Can we please go to the hospital?"

She springs in action, and I close my eyes. To sleep would be just so lovely. I let my arm fall, wrist up and exposed to the air. I have never felt less safe, nor more. I put everything out of my mind, all my terror and panic and the uncertainty of what will happen to me now.

This world that has so often failed to keep me safe will care for my daughter, I am sure of it.

**AN: Hello beautiful people. I left this note til the end because some of you reviewers seemed rather anxious to hear what happens next. That makes me so happy! And one of you, Emma/Guest, caught a major fuck up on my end! Chapter Five was in third person! Whoops. Not exactly sure how that happened, but it's fixed now. Thank you for your theories, they influence the story more than you know. Thank you all for continuing to indulge me. For those of you who have asked about length, I consider much of these first 12 chapters as more of a prologue to a much longer story. So no end anytime soon. Sending good vibes your way, goodnight!**


	13. Chapter 13

**AN: Thanks for the reviews! I do a little dance whenever y'all give me one.**

BPOV

"Isabella? Isabella, can you hear me?"

I start at the use of my full name. I open my eyes slowly, my eyelids feel heavy and worn down. Blinking against the harsh lights in the room, I squint up at the nurse leaning over me. She is fussing over my sheets, pulling them up and tucking them tight.

I move my head with some difficulty to the left, where I can feel I am hooked up to something. Many somethings, actually. Monitors, tubes, the needle that tugs gently and sickening at my arm… I have to gulp and turn away.

I look back to the nurse. She seems nice enough. She is old and motherly, and she is frowning at me. "Did you sleep well enough?"

I croak out a yes ma'am. My throat feels like sandpaper and I feel as though I have slept for a lifetime. The corners of my eyes are sticky with sleep.

The nurse raises my bed so that I am sitting up more. I shift my weight uncomfortably with my belly in the way. My skin feels stretched so tight I feel I may snap. With no small degree of embarrassment I suspect that I have a catheter in. I am hooked up to machines and bags and all manner of things seemingly from every direction. My heart rate picks up.

The nurse notices and scolds me. "Isabella, please try to rest. The doctor will be in soon and you need to stay calm." I eye her from my position of weakness on the bed.

I know they have my best interests at heart here, I am in a hospital. But I feel like she knows, this woman, she knows that I am bad and she is judging me for it. My big swollen mass of a belly and no ring on my finger. My nakedness upon discovery. Clear evidence of being punished during my time… my time with Edward.

Edward.

"Do you know what happened to… to the man they found me with? His name is Edward."

The nurse purses her lips and tucks my blanket in tighter. "Never you mind now, Isabella. Focus on yourself and that baby. The doctor will be in soon."

I try not to panic. The nurse is right- I should not be concerned with Edward right now. My baby girl needs me more than I need him. But I begin to sweat and feel cold all over. I am trying my best not to cry when the nurse bustles out of my room. I am alone in here, alone in this sterile room with its watercolor of a beach mocking me on the wall. I don't want to look at a beach. I want to be back with Edward.

My throat catches. I want to be back with him. I want to go back to that place. I knew that was required of me there. There were rules, and there was Edward. I blink through tears down at the mound of my stomach under the blankets. It's just us now.

I think back to our… our rescue, I suppose I should think of it as. Edward was like a man possessed. He was snarling and fighting the men. I worry that they will keep him from me because of this. Edward is not dangerous but he is imposing. And they probably knew he had been punishing me from the way I looked. But he didn't want to do it, and it was mostly deserved!

I wonder if they found the voice. I wonder if he somehow got away. I wonder if they will ever tell me. Things are so often kept from me. Charlie did not tell me anything that did not directly pertain to my duties at the house. Edward kept things from me, like about the girls who were there before me.

I'm not stupid, and I know that things will not be easy for me now that I am away from the voice. He could find me. If they did not catch him, he could find me at any moment and take my baby girl…

I let my head fall back and stare at the ceiling. Made of speckled foamy-looking tiles, it has the beginnings of some water damage by the door. I begin to cry in earnest.

I did not even think before now, but the men who found me must have called Charlie. I was still a minor when I was taken. I don't know if my birthday has since passed, but I bet they'll call him if they haven't already and I bet he will come and he will be so so angry and he will make me give up my baby girl I just know it and

The door flies open, the nurse is back. She has some others with her and I give a little scream. Strangers here, all around me, one of the monitors is chirping furiously. I look down and I am bleeding, I've ripped out whatever they had in my arm. I'm bawling and weakly beating my fist against the chest of one of the men. He is holding me down; they're strapping me to my bed…

Terror fills me. He's holding me down, he's keeping me here, he's going to have his fucking way with me I know it, he's going to hurt me

He's going to tell Charlie, Charlie will be here soon and they will have told him what a useless whore I have been. Charlie will take my baby girl or worse he'll keep her and she'll live as I did, she'll scrub the floors til her hands are raw and weeping she'll have burns and scars and cuts and

They've given me something; I feel the foreign needle slide into my skin like ice. My struggling grows weaker and slower and the world I see grows dim and

I droop like a wilted flower.

I wake up again sometime later. There is a man sitting quietly beside my bed, legs crossed as he writes on a clipboard. He is a measured distance away from me, respectful but present. He has carefully cropped black hair and looks sharp in his glasses.

I watch him warily for a moment but soon give this up. I think it's my doctor and he is just writing notes. I rotate my wrists and stretch, in a limited way, limited by the restraints and my size. I feel calm down, but the calm comes with some help I think.

I am hooked back up to everything.

The doctor has a clip on ID badge, but I cannot read the name.

He looks up from his work and gives me a patient smile. "Hello Isabella, my name is Dr. Ben Cheney, and you can call me Dr. Ben. I've been looking after you since your rescue."

"Bella." My response surprised me, but I am trusting this slow moving man. He is quiet and calm and he is soothing me. "How is my baby?"

"Bella, okay." He smiles again. His teeth are so white and straight, they make him look more honest somehow. "Your babies are doing fine. I'm not sure how exactly, since of course there has been a lot of trauma and the circumstances you were under were not ideal for a pregnancy. But we have done an ultrasound, and everything looks normal. They are developing normally, which we are of course excited to see considering everything."

I think my heart skips a beat. He is speaking in the plural. "Unfortunately, due to your extreme emaciation and general poor health, you will not be leaving your bed until they are born. The remainder of the pregnancy needs to be as stress-free as possible if we are going to get you anywhere near full term. Thankfully,…"

He continues but I cannot seem to hear him anymore. I look down curiously at my belly. It is very big, but… I wonder at how often I felt movement. How many are there, I wonder? I thought I could be killed in the process of growing one little life, but more than one? I have never felt so parched for knowledge in my life.

I flash my eyes back up to Dr. Ben and lock in with his. I interrupt whatever he was saying, "How many are there? Are they girls? How far along am I?"

He grins easily and laughs. "Slow down Bella! You have twins. A girl and a boy. And as far as weeks, we had some difficulty determining that with the multiple pregnancy and your state. But my thought is that you are at 34 weeks. I would love to get you to 37, full term for twins, but I am being optimistic in asking for another week. That will leave you at early term but it can only be helped so much."

Two little babies.

My first thought is how much I would love to tell Edward.

"Bella, my main concern is your health. I am having some issues right now ensuring your ability to rest. There are members of the police and the press who would very much like to speak with you, but I have told them you will not be up to it anytime soon. We can discuss this more soon if you would like."

I have another question for him, and my face grows hot. I feel embarrassed to ask, but. "Dr. Ben… how old am I?"

He clears his throat and wipes briskly at his eyes. He smiles to reassure me again but it doesn't quite reach them. "You had your 19th birthday two weeks ago, Bella."

**PS/AN: Woah! Did y'all see that coming? I didn't. Who has thoughts as to what is happening with Edward...**


	14. Chapter 14

BPOV

Charlie clasps my arm in his, running his fingers down my skin possessively. His tracing and tickling finger illicits bone-chills from me; I feel as though my body has turned to ice. "I'm just so happy you're okay, Isabella. You were gone for so long."

I nod, I'll be good Daddy I promise. I try to say the words but my lips will not move. I want to break my silence but I am kept back by every fiber of my being. I am grateful now for the catheter.

I do not know how long he will keep up his act of the concerned parent, but we have been alone for some time now. I have been assured again and again of the guard outside my door, but I do not think I could yell for help before Charlie could do something to me… or to the babies.

I am displayed for Charlie, in all my whoreish glory. He can see plainly my belly, he can see that I have been punished for something. A lot of somethings. I wonder what my punishment will be for leaving home? For spending over a year as a slut? I know he will see it this way and I do not blame him. I try to smile at my father, but it is a painful grimace.

"Now Isabella, I'm going to go get some coffee. Tell Daddy you love him." he grins at me, tilts his head for a peck on the cheek.

"I love you, Daddy." I sigh, and strain to reach his face. My restraints remain however, and my effort is made in vain.

"I thought, if anything, you would've learned to do what you're told you little bitch." Charlie hisses under hot breath, mask dropped for a moment. He pinches my wrist painfully, twisting the skin he was grazing over a moment ago.

I stifle my whimper, knowing it will only egg him on. "I'm sorry, sir."

He scowls at me, stalking out of the room. I glance down worried at the little mark, but he pinched me just where it could have been my restraints. Lucky me.

I considered protesting when he came into my room for the first time. But everyone was expecting a joyous renunion, and my increased heart rate and tears were normal for a girl who has gone over a year without seeing her father. I do not know how to tell anyone, no more than I knew how when I was just a girl.

Staying at the hospital has gotten easier over the past couple of days. No one can, or maybe will, tell me where Edward is or even if he is safe. I have panicked about it enough that the doctor forbade me to speak of him until the babies are born. Dr. Ben told me I was doing my own health no favors, but I was bound to cause an early delivery if I did not calm down. That shut me up.

I have gotten back some of my strength. Just before the raid, I was scarcely able to lift my own leg. I am exhausted of course, weary and glad of my bedrest. This makes sense, considering how lazy I am. Charlie would agree. But I do feel stronger. I am awake more often, and the tangle of life in my belly moves more now. I feel like a shell around them, curving around them and keeping them safe. I only wish I could protect them from the outside world for even longer.

So far, I have spent a week inside the hospital. A calendar and clock were brought in, a request I was terrified to make but also desperate. I could not stand the thought of more time slipping by with me unaware. Time took on such a dangerous fluidity while we… while I was captive and I need to gain that part of life back. Living without a home even before that, time was reduced to only night or day. It pains me to take ownership in this way but I found it hard to breathe when I woke up a few mornings ago and had no idea of the time. The curtains are always drawn in my room, in an effort to keep me resting and calm.

This is the strangest thing about being in the hospital. My life is reduced to my health and the health of the babies. I have a gut-wrenching urge to protect them and sacrifice my own freedom, but I cannot help but feel some of the powerlessness I felt as a captive. Some of the… the sense of being livestock. A broodmare.

I shift uneasily. There is a television in the corner of the room, meant to entertain me. They keep the sound off but subtitles on, and they keep it on some sort of nonsense channel. I pay little attention, since what really interests me is the news. I am terrified that Edward will stare back at me from that television, from a mugshot in a jumpsuit. Or worse, that I will read a headline that tells me the voice is still at large. I know this is why they keep me from seeing, but the not knowing is almost worse.

Charlie comes back through the door. He comes in gently and slowly, likely for my guard's benefit. I give a little start despite this. I do not trust him. I know that I need to be a good girl, but I do not much feel like a good girl right now. I feel like a girl that has been used completely up and spit back into a world where I am not asked what I want. I feel as though I have been a captive in my childhood, a captive of a madman, and now my own health holds me captive. The babies do, in some way. I feel a spark of resentment, and immediate heart-breaking shame.

Charlie can read me like a book. He doesn't know what thought I've just had, but he knows I am embarrassed and shocked by it. He shoots me a snide grin and takes a pull of his coffee. I hope he drops the cup and it fries his lap.

No, no, no, I mustn't think like that.

I study him from where I sit, careful not to reach for his eyes with my own. Eye contact has always provoked him, earned me a slap for being a cheeky little thing-bitch-whore. Wince.

I wonder after Jake, sweet Jake. One of the nurses whispered to me yesterday that they found me through him. He searched high and low, dug up all the information he could and passed it onto the police when he had proof of the voice conducting a big operation somewhere in the city. They found us… they found me, from there. I want to shake my memories from that time and that day out of my head. I do not think I will ever see Edward again. Not with the proof of my transgressions large under my blankets, between my father and I.

Dr. Ben enters the room. He looks a little concerned, and very serious. I am on alert instantly, since he normally makes such a studied effort to be pleasant and calm around me. My breath quickens and I flash my eyes over to Charlie. He has bristled, but grins his teeth in a garish attempt at a friendly grin. Perhaps that is just my imagination, though. Charlie has kept up appearances with me for years. He knows how to spin me as the unruly child in need of a… in need of a firm hand.

I tremble slightly and clench my right hand nervously. Dr. Ben sits beside my bed, meeting my eyes with his soothing grey eyes. I lock onto them.

"Bella, your father and I-"

"Isabella." Charlie's voice rips into the room.

"I'm sorry?"

"My daugher prefers Isabella."

Dr. Ben frowns. "I'm sorry Mr. Swan, would you mind stepping out of the room? I have sensitive information I need to speak with your daughter about." My heart sinks.

Charlie crosses his leg over his knee, clasps his hands before him and leans back. His smile is cool and predatory. "Dr. Cheney, anything you need to say to her you can say to me."

Dr. Ben snaps up tall, looming over the bed. I whimper at the sudden movement and flinch. "Mr. Swan, I am happy to call Bella's security detail in here. I need to speak with her alone."

Charlie is cowed. He does not want to break appearances, I know this. "Fine. I need to use the men's anyway." He still snaps a little, and stalks out of the room.

The door whooshes closed behind him and I catch a whiff of hallway air.

Dr. Ben sighs and beings to undo my restraints. I start to protest, but bite my tongue. I can behave. If he wants this done to me, it's not up to me.

"Bella, Charlie has asked for paperwork to be brought up for you. He wants you to sign away rights to your children."

My heart plummets and tears begin to flow immediately. My breath picks up, and I try to catch it. Dr. Ben looks sternly at me. "You calm down, now. Come on, I am expecting to be able to speak with you."

I gulp and nod, wiping frantically at my eyes with my newly free hands. I shift to sit a little taller and listen to him. Dr. Ben expects more than a snivelling coward from me, he expects a mother.

"I need you to tell me now, Bella. Charlie has been abusing you for some time, hasn't he?"

I nod.

"Bella, I need you to say it out loud."

"Yessir."

"You know you do not have to call me that."

"Sorry… Dr. Ben. Sorry. He can't take them, can he?" My voice quivers though I try to keep it strong and steady.

"You're 19 now Bella, so he has no direct guardianship over you. However, if you cannot get your anxiety under control, he will make the argument that you need to be legally put under his care after the birth. I know he has power over you, and I have a plan for how we can help that."

I am lifted by hope. "How?"

"You need to speak to the police Bella. I know, I know, not about your experience just yet. But you need to tell them that Charlie hurt you before you disappeared and he cannot be allowed near you now."

Dr. Ben cannot possibly know what he is asking of me. To go against the man I fear most in the world… to betray the man I have worked my whole life to obey. Conditioned, trained, kept bent to his every will. It took every ounce of strength I had in me to run away from my problems before I was taken. How could I possibly face him?

"He's a cop, sir, I can't-"

"You can, and you have to. If you have any desire to keep your children under your care, you need to. We have not been telling you anything about Edward for a reason, sweetheart. I must leave it for now by saying that Edward will not be in any position to pursue any parental right. Of course, paternity has not even been established-"

I cry out and he looks instantly sick to his stomach. "I'm sorry Bella, but those are the facts. We cannot know what happened while you were being held, you were drugged the vast majority of the time, and…" his face ripples with many emotions.

I bite my lip and stare up at him. "I can do it. How can you help me?"


End file.
